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Posted March 12, 2013 06:33 pm

The Editor's Desk: Monument bill would etch bad idea in stone

So let’s say you’re the mayor of, or a council member in, a small Georgia town, and one day it occurs to you and your elected colleagues that perhaps you’d like to pursue some economic development opportunities.

Now, let’s say you all figure that maybe that statue to your town’s Confederate dead that dominates the town square might — through no fault of your own, and maybe due to some misperception on the part of any given economic development prospect — impede your efforts to attract that economic development. So, you all decide — after holding a public hearing or two, of course — that maybe moving that monument somewhere less visible, like maybe the park a couple of blocks away from the square, might be a good idea.

And there you have it: A local government decision, supported by local citizens, in pursuit of a local goal seen as beneficial to the community. In short, just the sort of local control that conservative elected officials, including the Republican majority in the Georgia General Assembly, champion as the best way to govern civic affairs.

Except, that is, when that local control might mean moving a Confederate statue — at least in the minds of a half-dozen Republican state lawmakers. House Bill 91, sponsored by Reps. Tommy Benton of Jefferson, Stephen Allison of Blairsville, Delvis Dutton of Glennville, Tom McCall of Elberton, Kevin Cooke of Carrollton and Jay Roberts of Ocilla, would make moving historical or military monuments on public property a violation of state law.

Just so we’re clear here, the bill, which got a favorable review from the House’s State Properties Committee, has yet to get a vote in the House, and so is effectively stalled for this, the first year of the two-year legislative session. There is, though, nothing to keep House Bill 91 from moving forward next year.

And there are a couple of loopholes, of sorts, in the law. It would, for example, allow monuments to be moved to accommodate road projects or construction projects, provided that they were placed in “a site of similar prominence.” And, there’s a provision allowing for “appropriate measures” to be taken “for the preservation, protection and interpretation” of covered monuments.

Now, certainly, there’s an argument to be made that there is some value in preserving historical monuments, even — or perhaps especially — when those monuments mark problematic moments in the past. It is, however, much harder to argue that decisions on the fates of those monuments ought to rest anywhere other than the communities in which they stand.

TWITTER: If you’d like to get the kind of insight you see here in easy-to-digest snippets, I’m on the Twitter @Jim__Thompson.